WILL CISA

Executive Chef

When Will Cisa moved to Asheville, he had so much to bring with him that he had to move in two stages; the first was without his massive collection of beloved cookbooks—except for one. He refused to be separated from his tattered copy of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee.

A Charleston, SC native, Cisa began cooking when he was 18 years old in the kitchens of familiar fried seafood restaurants in his hometown. Once he discovered his passion was food, Cisa attended the Culinary Institute of America and got his first job as a cook at FIG in Charleston. He then moved to Portland during the chef-owned farm-to-table boom and helped open several restaurants, followed by work as a restaurant consultant for a few years before he realized he needed a break to reconnect with his love of cooking. Cisa decided to take a trip to Southeast Asia. He bought a motorcycle and spent the next year and a half traveling to Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Malaysia, and Cambodia while stopping to enjoy the food along his way. 

After his travels, he returned to Charleston and started cooking at Xiao Bao Biscuit. From there, Cisa became the Chef de Cuisine at Standard Foods in Raleigh, NC. Missing the flavors he knew and loved from Asian cuisine, Cisa decided to move to Asheville in October 2018 to work for Gan Shan Station Owner and Chef Chef Patrick O’Cain.

In early 2020, Patrick O’Cain made the decision to close Gan Shan Station at 143 Charlotte Street after five successful years. Cisa’s talent and coastal heritage had caught the eye of Eric Scheffer, who asked him to take the helm of a new seafood concept: Jettie Rae’s Oyster House. Cisa gladly came full circle to return to his roots as head chef at Jettie Rae’s, crafting and sourcing seafood with an honesty and authenticity that comes from growing up on the shores of South Carolina.